Guitarist Cameron Mizell’s music has been described as “skillfully pairing controlled abstraction with Americana roots” and his playing “superbly presents high technical proficiency, artistry, and melodic skills.” His latest solo guitar album, Memory/Imagination, is available on Destiny Records.

I recently wrote a new article for MusicianWages.com regarding practice routines. Over the last several years I've noticed that my guitar students show more progress if we spend more time each lesson learning how to practice, rather than reviewing the material from the week before and trying to correct mistakes. We could spend a lifetime perfecting one piece, or we could focus on practicing in a way that makes perfecting many pieces more easily attainable.
You can read the entire article here:

What To Practice

Time Management

Schedule your practice time ahead of time. One hour of practice might look like this:

20 Minutes – Warmup / Scales / Arpeggios

10 Minutes – Getting to know the fretboard; learning every place to play a note, chord, etc.

30 Minutes – Work on repertoire

If you have two hours to practice, I might recommend the second hour look like this:

15 Minutes – Free Improvisation or Composing

15 Minutes – Working on roadblocks, such as difficult chord changes

30 Minutes – Work on repertoire

Repetition. Rest. Repeat.

Just as repetition and rest builds muscular strength, the act of repeating a skill over and over creates stronger connections between neurons in our brain. However, those connections won’t be immediately apparent. Rest plays an important role in allowing our brain to process what it has just learned.

Transcription

The absolute best way to improve yourself as a musician is to transcribe, transcribe, transcribe. What better way to master our craft than to emulate the masters?

Transcribing utilizes everything we would ever need to practice:

Aural skills – Your ears!

Musicality – Learn not only the notes, but the tone, inflection, and nuances of each note.

Technique – Master those difficult passages.

Scales, arpeggios, chords, rhythm – The building blocks of all music, directly applied in the piece of music you’re learning.

Composition, improvisation – These skills are two sides of the same coin. Learning somebody else’s composed melody or improvised solo requires the same skill and reaps the same benefits.

Notation – Memorize your transcription first, but then write it down. Not just for posterity, the act of writing down transcriptions will help you see the music, which will help you improve your reading.

Expand your repertoire – You’ve just learned a new piece of music or lick.

Take lessons.

All of us, regardless of our skill level, could benefit from private lessons every now and then. If you’ve tried to structure your practice time and still can’t decide what to work on, perhaps it’s a sign you need to take lessons. Many musicians, myself included, teach via Skype. No matter where you live, all you need is a good internet connection to take lessons.

Today's guitar lesson is an in depth study of minor pentatonic scales and how they can be used over different chord changes. Plenty of fretboard diagrams and audio examples included. Practice what you learned with a jam track at the end of the lesson.

As I've been teaching private lessons more frequently and to a wider variety of students, the foundation of every lesson regardless of their abilities, goals, or repertoire, is how to practice. The long term goal of practicing is master the guitar so it is no longer a barrier between the musical ideas in your head and the ears of your listeners.

There's a common debate among guitar players about the origin of tone. Does it come from gear or the guitarist's fingers? It's a silly debate, really. Good tone is completely objective, but more importantly, tone starts with the fingers, and is enhanced by the proper gear. If you're not satisfied with the tone from your fingers, you'll never truly be satisfied with the tone from any guitar, amp, and pedal combination. If you know how to manipulate tone with your fingers, however, you'll be able to make the most out of whatever rig you're playing.

This week's edition of Woodshed Wednesday is for beginning guitar students. One of the most basic concepts on the guitar is often the first hurdle for beginners: Consistent strumming. Physically speaking, strumming the guitar is a fairly natural motion, yet most students have trouble when rhythm is introduced. This lesson will help you get over that hurdle and realize that the physical motion of strumming can actually make rhythmic patterns easier.

Here are some tips for beginners who are learning an instrument for the first time. Although I'm writing with guitar students in mind, I believe these concepts can help relieve some of the frustration that comes with learning any instrument.